Antec 1200 - 11x Suspended HDD Project

Silencing hard drives, optical drives and other storage devices

Moderators: NeilBlanchard, Ralf Hutter, sthayashi, Lawrence Lee

Post Reply
andyb
Patron of SPCR
Posts: 3307
Joined: Wed Dec 15, 2004 12:00 pm
Location: Essex, England

Antec 1200 - 11x Suspended HDD Project

Post by andyb » Thu May 01, 2014 3:36 pm

I have an Antec 1200 case and I want to suspend 11 HDD's, all 3.5".

I have had a look through the various threads about suspension and what people have used. If you look at the inside of my case and the mounting options for elastic bands on cords, you will see from the images in the following link that thick cord is not possible without drilling holes - so bands would be better.

http://hexus.net/tech/reviews/chassis/1 ... ed/?page=6

The only HDD suspension that I have ever done was some years ago with "StretchMagic" 1mm cord with a PATA laptop HDD, a very different proposition from my next project.

Here is the real question, what type of elastic band would you suggest, none of the bands that I look at on the internet say how much weight the band will hold, and how much they will stretch with X weight.

Is 1/4 inch (x2 bands per drive) enough.? Is there a particular brand to use.?

As far as knotting or tying is concerned, I am sure I can figure that out at the time. One thing I will be doing for sure is securing the drives so they cannot slip out front to back when I need to move the case.


Andy

zyg0tic
Posts: 7
Joined: Fri Jul 11, 2014 12:46 am

Re: Antec 1200 - 11x Suspended HDD Project

Post by zyg0tic » Fri Jul 11, 2014 1:05 am

I have an Antec 1200 and afaik it can only receive intake airflow by the HDD drive cages. So im interested to know why that isnt an issue. If you are suspending the drives, making sure they are receiving cooling is important imo.

I havent suspended drives in the 1200 so no experience there sorry.

Looking at the case though, the 2 rectangle slits on each side of the drive bays could be used for threading the elastic cord. I dont think you need extra heavy duty elastic (and you could always just double up with a thinner elastic). The drives suspension mounted in an Antec 1200 should each have their own separate elastic - you dont need to hang more than one drive off a piece of elastic, so accumulated weight of the drives is not an issue.

I would just use an elastic cord thatll fit through the drive screw holes. That would give you the option of threading through the recantagular slits or the round holes.

Ideally youd also want a hole in the middle of the drive bay to secure drives with elastic in the middle too. But, despite the lack of a middle hole, you could instead horizontally cross the elastic from back to front across the top and bottom of the drive, and this would also help to secure it in the middle.

But of course, if you dont need the drives to be high performance 7200rpm ones, then just go for a lower rpm version. Lower rpm should mean lower vibration. Also heavier drives (higher capacity usually) will vibrate more than others.

Post Reply